Johnny Otis: 1921 - 2012﻿

Johnny Otis passed away on Tuesday, January 17th, in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. He was 90 years old. To refer to Johnny Otis as a musician would be like calling Thomas Jefferson a politician. It would be like referring to Muhammad Ali simply as a prize fighter or Leonardo da Vinci as a painter. Thinking of Johnny Otis simply as a musician would be like thinking of Benjamin Franklin as guy who flew a kite.

Johnny Otis was in fact an American Renaissance Man.

On the surface he would appear to be a bundle of contradictions. He was a white man who became the embodiment of black culture. He was a big band leader who is considered a pioneer of rock and roll. He was a cutting edge musical innovator who hosted his own “oldies” radio show. He was a blues man who was also a television star. He was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who didn’t much care for the genre. He was an urban hip cat who was also a country farmer.

He was also an accomplished chef, author, painter, sculpture, talent scout and nightclub owner. He was a songwriter, arranger and producer. He was a drummer, pianist, vibraphonist and an occasional singer. He was a politician and a preacher. Oh yea.... the cat even sold his own brand of organic apple juice.

He was Johnny Otis and his is a story like no other.

Born Ioannis Alexandros Veliotes to the parents of Greek immigrants in the Northern California town of Vallejo, Otis grew up in nearby Berkeley. His parents ran a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood. At an early age Otis embraced black culture.

"When I got near teen age, I was so happy with my friends and the African American culture that I couldn't imagine not being part of it," Otis told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 1991. Johnny Otis would live his entire life celebrating the soul of that culture.

In 1939, Otis heard the Count Basie Band at the San Francisco World’s Fair. The impact of this experience was profound and Otis soon took up the drums. He went on to play blues with a local band in nearby west Oakland. Otis soon found himself playing in bands that traveled throughout the west. In 1941 he married his high school sweetheart, a black woman named Phyllis Walker. In 1943, Otis organized a group named after himself and partner Preston Love, called the Otis Love Band.

Still in his twenties, Otis started playing drums with big bands and jazz combos. He moved to Los Angeles to play in Harlan Leonard's Kansas City Rockets.

In 1945, Otis formed his first big band, a sixteen piece ensemble that was the house band at the Los Angeles nightclub called The Alabam which was part of the burgeoning Central Avenue jazz and blues scene. "Man, you could go into one club and there'd be Lester Young jamming, go into another and you'd find T- Bone Walker and down the street Miles Davis would be blowing. Yeah, L.A. was happening." Otis told the Los Angeles Times in 1979.

Otis also worked as a studio drummer with a variety of artists. He actually played on sessions with the legendary tenor saxophonist Illinois Jaquet as well as Young. He played drums on the 1945 classic by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, Driftin' Blues, sung by the group’s pianist Charles Brown. Otis’ big breakthrough under his own name was his take on Earle Hagen’s Harlem Nocturne.

Driftin’ Blues and Otis’ take on Harlem Nocturne are both examples of a new sound that began to emerge in post war America. This music would come to be known as rhythm and blues.

Johnny Otis was on the forefront of this new musical movement. The hybrid sound had the urgency of country blues and gospel combined with the sophistication of big band jazz music. It was played primarily in small combo settings. This new sound could be heard blasting out of jukeboxes throughout black America. This music would influence the electric blues made in Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and elsewhere.

Big bands were for the most part no longer economically viable and country blues seemed a little out of step in the west coast urban environment that had just entered the atomic age. The rhythm and blues that Johnny Otis championed was powerful, fun, sophisticated and yet down to earth all at the same time. It would change the face of music forever and then, be all but forgotten.

In 1948, Otis and a partner opened the Barrelhouse Club in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Otis would pick players from open mic nights and through talent shows. Tenor saxophone great Big Jay McNeely was just such a find. McNeely told me last summer it was Johnny Otis that “discovered him” at an open mic night at the Barrelhouse Club and gave him his first big break.

He would also pick off musicians in traveling bands. Otis also used a staple of singers like Little Esther Phillips, Mel Walker, Devonia "Lady Dee" Williams and others. Otis had formed the nucleus of the group that would eventually become one of the most popular barnstorming musical acts of the era.

Johnny Otis took the show on the road in what was called the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan. Otis and his ensemble played his brand of music to large enthusiastic audiences both black and white from coast to coast. He was also a hit in the studio, as he scored 15 top forty hits on the rhythm and blues charts between 1950 and 1952.

His ability for finding new talent and putting them in the right musical situations was uncanny. He is credited with discovering songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. He produced their song, Hound Dog for Big Mamma Thornton long before Elvis ever stepped foot in a Memphis recording studio.

In 1954, Johnny Otis met a 14-year old singing prodigy named Jamesetta Hawkins from Los Angeles. He took the young singer under his wing and recorded her first single Wallflower. He also gave her the stage name which was variation of her first name. The legend of Etta James was born.

Otis quit touring in 1955 to spend more time with his family. He became a Los Angeles disc jockey with a popular radio show that was broadcast out of L.A. for decades. The Johnny Otis Show was also syndicated in San Francisco. Otis also hosted his own local television show based in Los Angeles from 1954-1961 and started his own record label, continuing to record hit records under his own brand, The Johnny Otis Show.

A talent scout for other labels like the King / Federal label out of Cincinnati and Don Robey’s Peacock Records based in Houston, his discoveries included, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, Jackie Wilson and Johnny Ace. Otis even produced some of the earliest recordings by Little Richard.

In the late fifties major labels recognized the market potential of rhythm and blues. Capitol Records courted Otis and eventually he succumbed to a lucrative offer and signed with the label. In the intervening years he expressed the feeling that by signing with Capitol he felt like he was abandoning his black roots to make what he called, “contrived rock and roll shit.”

In 1958 he wrote a song based on the Bo Diddley beat, “shave and a hair cut...two bits”. The song Willie and the Hand Jive would be his only tune to “crossover” to the larger white market even though he wrote and recorded the song as a vehicle to lampoon rock and roll. Audiences and radio programmers didn’t get the joke and the song was a hit.

It wasn’t too many years later that rhythm and blues was wiped off the airwaves and turntables by what was commonly referred to as the British Invasion. As Otis told the Los Angeles Times in a 1994 interview "The white boys from England came over with a recycled version of what we created. We were out of business, man."

In 1969 he recorded an album for Kent Records under the pseudonym Snatch and the Poontangs. It was an adult blues album that contained sexually explicit lyrics. The three musicians on the record also used alias’ including a guitarist who went by the name of Prince Wunnerful.

Johnny Otis then cut two more blues albums for the Kent label with a more traditional lyrical content, Cold Shot in 1969 and 1970’s Cuttin’ Up. Both records featured yet another young prodigy, teenage guitar sensation, Johnny Otis Jr., better known as Shuggie. The young Otis was a true wunderkind and was of course Prince Wunnerful.

In 1970, the Johnny Otis Show knocked the audience off their feet at The Monterey Jazz Festival. The band leader and rhythm and blues impresario put together a program that included Big Joe Turner, Roy Milton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Esther Phillips, Pee Wee Crayton, Jimmy Rushing, Roy Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter and others, including his son Shuggie. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Senior Pop Music Correspondent Joel Selvin called that show, “One of the greatest musical performances I ever attended.” For an afternoon anyway, the mostly white audience could see what had been taken away from them for the better part of the past decade. A few moments of this performance can be seen in a movie entitled, Play Misty for Me made by a film maker, directing his first feature. Local resident Clint Eastwood incorporated the festival in his shooting of the film that also included footage of the Cannonball Adderly Quintet.

I think Selvin put it best when he said about Johnny Otis, “His music was like the man - direct, honest, playful, a little raunchy, hip and to the point. But his self-expression could not be contained by music alone. “

In subsequent years, Otis expressed his creativity in other ways. In 1968 he wrote a book entitled, Listen to the Lambs that was by and large a reflection of race relations in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots. In addition to writing, he was a painter and sculptor.

For ten years Otis was the deputy chief of staff to a Democrat named Mervin Dymally. During Otis’ tenure with the public servant, Dymally presided in the California State legislature, became the state’s first African–American Lieutenant Governor and went on to serve in the United States Congress.

For a time Otis turned his home in the West Adams District of Los Angeles into the nondenominational Landmark Church and became its pastor. He would often lead the choir, which at various times might include the likes of Etta James and Esther Phillips. Otis said that a lot of folks came out to see Reverend Hand Jive but the pastor took his work seriously and immersed himself in charitable work that included feeding the homeless. The church would remain active until 1985.

Otis’ next career move was born out of his concern for the environment. He became an organic farmer in the rural northern California town of Sebastopol, in Sonoma County. He also sold Johnny Otis Apple Juice at a road side store, as well as produce grown at his nearby five and a half acre farm. The store doubled as a nightclub where he could perform his music in front of sold out crowds on Friday and Saturday nights.

The 1990’s weren’t just about a musician becoming Johnny Appleseed as Otis published three more books, “Upside Your Head!: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue” (1993), “Colors and Chords” (1995), a collection of his paintings, cartoons, wood carvings and sculptures, and “Red Beans & Rice and Other Rock ’n’ Roll Recipes” (1997), a cookbook.

Johnny Otis continued to perform at blues and jazz Festivals into the 21st century. The Johnny Otis Show still included Shuggie as well as his other son, Nick, who had been playing drums with his dad for years. Two grandsons, Lucky and Eric Otis, also played guitar with him.

In addition to his sons, he is survived by his wife of 70 years, Phyllis, two daughters, Janice and Laura Johnson,nine grandchildren,eight great-grandchildren, and a great-great-grandchild.

Call it west coast blues, rhythm and blues, jump blues or just great music. It is virtually impossible to imagine this music without Johnny Otis.

What people wanted to call his music, he said, was of no concern to him. “Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it’s all African-American music,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1993. “The music isn’t just the notes, it’s the culture — the way Grandma cooked, the way Grandpa told stories, the way the kids walked and talked.”

Johnny Otis also said, "I'm not suggesting our music is the only music, but I am suggesting that there are certain elements in America's culture that are so precious that it would be a shame for them to go down the drain."

I hope there are folks who take the time and effort to celebrate the legacy of Johnny Otis with the same verve, dedication and articulated intelligence that he had for this beautiful music. The Johnny Otis Show must go on.